“Yes.”

Annie digested the information.

“I’m sorry, Annie. I’m really sorry.”

She waved away his apology, past that now. “Why,” she asked, “didn’t he just kill her?”

“I don’t know.” He took a long swallow of wine, this one straight from the bottle. “I’ve asked myself that same question a dozen times. Why didn’t he just kill her.”

He wiped tears from his face with the hem of his shirt.

“I guess the question really is, why did he kill her now?”

“I have a call in to the sheriff in Montana. As soon as I’ve heard about cause of death, I’ll let you know.”

He cleared his throat. “Appreciate it.”

“In the meantime, why not put the wine away? Take a shower, get something to eat. Get some sleep.”

“Merlot was the only thing she ever drank.” He held up the bottle and studied the label as if it held some weighty truth.

“Grady, I am so sorry about Melissa. I don’t know what to say.” She swallowed hard. “I’m more sorry than I can say, if my looking for her, for her report, was the catalyst-”

“Don’t, Annie. There’s no point…” He shrugged helplessly.

“Still…”

“Just… don’t, okay?” He looked away.

“I’ll call as soon as I hear anything.” It was the only thing she could think to say.

“Okay.”

She wanted to go to him and put her arms around him, but she knew that nothing would comfort him. Instead, she walked to the door to let herself out. She opened the door to leave, then turned and asked, “Did anyone know that you and Melissa were married?”

“Only my brothers.”

“You didn’t tell your sister?”

“Nah.” He smiled weakly. “You know Mia, she talks to everyone. But my brothers, well… you know how they are. They’re both so closemouthed, you never know what’s going on with either of them.”

Evan took a sip of coffee and grimaced to find it had gone cold during the course of his telephone conversation with john number twenty-seven on the list of seventy-four he’d gotten from the D.A.’s files when he arrived at the courthouse at 5:30 that morning. To say the guard at the front door had been surprised to see anyone at that hour-least of all on a Saturday-would have been an understatement.

“Early day, Detective?” The man had yawned as he unlocked the front door.

“Yeah.” Evan shifted the cardboard carrier holding the three large cups of coffee he’d picked up at the local convenience store. As he passed through the metal detector, he handed one Styrofoam cup to the guard. “Thought you could use a wake-up this morning, too.”

“Thank you, Detective Crosby. Nice of you to think of me.”

“Nice of you to let me in.” Evan smiled and walked the dimly lit hall to the stairwell, and took the steps down to the basement, where the county detectives and some of the assistant district attorneys were housed.

The hallway was darker here, and it had taken him several tries before he managed to open the main office door. He locked it behind him and walked through the common area, lit only by an “Exit” sign on either side, and went directly to his small office at the end of the hall. He’d placed the coffee on one side of the desk and turned on his computer. He searched the files until he found what he was looking for, opened one of the coffees, and sipped at it while he scanned the screen, occasionally making notes on a yellow legal pad he’d pulled from the bottom drawer. By the time his list was complete, the sun had come up and enough of the morning had passed that he could begin making his calls without risk of having anyone complain that it was too early.

By noon, he’d called almost one third of the names on his list and had spoken with twelve. The others had either not answered or were no longer at the number he had on record. Out of the twelve, only five were willing to speak with him about their prior arrests. He’d left telephone messages for several others but was not optimistic that many-if any-of his calls would be returned.

Of the five he’d spoken with, none of them admitted to knowing anything about any young Hispanic girls working in an area house in which they might be held against their will.

“I wouldn’t go for none of that, man, none of that young stuff,” one of the johns had told him. “That’s disgusting, man…”

“There are a couple of Hispanic chicks working the corner at Seventh and Warwick,” another had offered when pressed, “but they ain’t no kids.”

“I don’t usually ask to see ID, you know what I mean?” another had snorted.

Evan rubbed his eyes and stood to stretch. His legs felt cramped and his shoulders stiff, and he thought a walk outside, even just around the courthouse, might be refreshing. He opened his door and noticed lights on in several of the other offices. He’d been so engrossed in his research that he hadn’t heard anyone else come in.

He stopped at Cal Henry’s door to chat for a moment, but left when Cal’s girlfriend called. Their verbal feuds were legendary, and Evan had witnessed more than enough of them in the past. He waved to Cal and continued on his way outside.

“You take care, Detective,” the guard at the door called to him, barely looking up.

“I’m just running out for a minute. I’ll be back.”

Evan stepped into the sun and shielded his eyes from the glare. He took a deep breath, and deciding he was as much in need of food as of exercise, he walked two blocks to Main Street, where he picked up lunch from the deli on the corner. He returned to the courthouse and took a seat on one of the benches on the front lawn and proceeded to eat his ham and cheese on rye while mentally replaying the conversations he’d had that morning, hoping to find some inadvertent comment that might lead him to something concrete.

Reluctantly, he had to admit he hadn’t missed anything the first time around. There’d been no slip of the tongue, nothing he could use as an excuse to call any of the men back to confirm. He rolled up his lunch trash in the bag it had come in and started toward the trash can when he heard someone calling his name.

“Hey, Joe,” he called back to his former partner, who was walking up the sidewalk with a large brown file folder under his arm.

“Evan. Good to see you.” Joe Sullivan met Evan in the middle of the sidewalk.

“What brings you in on a Saturday?”

Joe held up the file.

“I just got a call at home from Shelley Stern telling me this case is going to trial on Monday and she needed whatever materials I had that she didn’t have.” He shook his head. “How am I supposed to know what she has?”

“I’m going back in, want me to drop it off for you?”

“Nah, I’m going to need to talk to her anyway.”

Evan tossed his trash in the direction of the open can and missed.

“I see moving up to county detective hasn’t done anything to improve your aim,” Sullivan noted.

“It’ll take more than a new job to do that. What’s new in Lyndon?”

“Not much. Things have quieted down a lot since the slayer was brought in. Nice job Jackie did with that case, wasn’t it?”

“Nice job that Jackie did?” Evan scoffed.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means Jackie had a lot of help from the FBI.”

“That’s not the way I heard it.”

Evan shook his head in disgust and waved to the guard, who was already on his way to unlock the door.

The two men went through the procedure to enter the building, then walked together down to the D.A.’s office. Joe stopped off at Shelley Stern’s office-the third door on the left-and Evan continued on to his office. Fifteen minutes later, he looked up to find Joe in the doorway.

“So you working all day or what?”

“Most of it. I’d hoped to finish up early enough to make a trip down to Annie’s for the rest of the weekend, but I guess that’s not going to happen.”

“What are you working on?” Joe asked. “That the other killer case?”